How can Britain achieve 100% clean energy by 2030? Yesterday, Keir Starmer set out an answer: a new publicly owned clean energy generator. Great British Energy would own, run and invest in new, clean energy infrastructure, from offshore wind to tidal and solar. Operating as a generating company, not energy retailer, it would have the potential both to reduce our household fuel bills and create a future of clean, affordable, abundant energy.
The full scale and details of Great British Energy are yet to be determined. But though Labour’s proposal may appear novel in Britain, public ownership of renewables is already commonplace. Indeed, nearly half of the UK’s offshore wind capacity is publicly owned – just not by the British public. Instead, it is owned by foreign governments.
